:-) doesn’t bother me, I’m comfortable with all three connotations. BTW I know you read Andrew Keen, whom I found execrable. I have to assume you will detest Taleb’s Black Swan given I like it so far…..

JP, I am too passionately wrapped up in a history of the San Francisco Symphony (more a personal memoir of a member of the string section since 1936) to get too involved with any other reading. I find it fascinating to read an account of work practices that have nothing to do with white collars (except for the shirt under the tux jacket) and is thoroughly entrenched in verbs (performance), rather than nouns (objects). Talk about a thundering herd! As to Andrew, if you follow The Great Seduction, you may have seen that I chose the San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra over the panel that provoked his “Blogs are boring” post last May!

JP, the memoir is called THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY: MUSIC, MAESTROS, AND MUSICIANS. Used copies are apparently available through the UK Amazon.com site. (Apparently, I cannot submit this with the Amazon link, perhaps because it is commercial; but you should have no trouble finding it.) The book was published in 1983, which means it goes up to about five years into the tenure of Edo de Waart. So it is far from contemporaneous; but, since it is a personal memoir, it should not be confused with anthropological field work!